My mind is a swamp. A swamp littered with broken glass. I know how important it is to put on my big rubber boots.

I have to navigate Medicare’s blockade. Again. Still. I need to work with a doctor who doesn’t believe me and seems outraged when I ask him to address my needs. And this might all be my swamp, bubbling up and belching gas. A hallucination? Reality? Somewhere in between?

It makes my gut ache, all this wading around and watching for gators. The glass shards glitter in the foggy light, slicing across thin rubber.

I realize I take high offense at being disbelieved, as if I know nothing of my own body or the patterns of my Everglade mind. It is a kind of erasure, wiping away my years of struggle and learning, all the experimentation, all the adventure. It denies my intelligence.

So, I take a big lungful of the swamp gas and blow it out. Offense is a state of mind. An unhelpful state of mind. My task today is to adjust my perspective. I cannot be erased by another. I know who I am. I know what I know. And I will play the Game.

I can only imagine after all your years of work, how difficult it is to restock the toolbox. But many of the tools are yours alone, not dependent on outside counsel. Perhaps this is just an opportunity to remember what those are.

How far are you traveling to see this new therapist? You are located in a more backwoods area of the state, so finding the right people might be difficult… if they’re even available in this state. These are new roads to travel. Surely beyond the bubbling swamp gases there is better ground to tread on – where you’re surer footed and more confident. Dig deep – you’ve got this, Sandy.

Oh I’m so happy for you that she’s a promising fit!! Tahlequah isn’t so bad a drive and it’s a pretty area. I think the autumn weather will help everyone. It’s sweltering where you are with all of that vegetation! I hope the backwoods is as healing to you someday as it has been to me. 🙂

well, if offense is a state of mind then its also contagious because when I read about being treated as if you knew nothing of yourself, I got offended too. Then I remembered that this happens to everybody sooner or later inside the medical industrial systems and that you are a survivor. And Oklahoma has bad mental health and roads so I’m leaning towards the online stuff, your own deep intuition and wisdom of mind and body and their dance and that the universe will bring the people you need into your life.